ST. LOUIS – Jose Reyes and Keith Hernandez had to be separated on the Mets’ charter plane Sunday night after a tense confrontation over Hernandez’s critical comments about the All-Star shortstop.

A team source described the situation aboard the plane as “very heated.” One player told The Post that he thought Reyes and the popular former Met – now an analyst for the club’s SNY TV network – were close to exchanging punches until others stepped in.

Reyes said yesterday he was angry at Hernandez after numerous friends and relatives told him Hernandez accused the Mets of “babying” Reyes during the broadcast of Sunday’s 3-1 win over the Yankees at Shea Stadium.

“He got his point [across] and I got mine,” Reyes, when asked to describe the confrontation, told The Post before he drove in three runs in the Mets’ 11-1 victory over the Cardinals last night. “I’m not too happy with the way he’s been talking.”

According to one account, strongly denied by both Reyes and Hernandez, what set Reyes off during the flight was when Hernandez allegedly responded to Reyes’ concerns by saying: “I was just doing my job – you should do yours.”

Hernandez’s “babying” comment was in response to Reyes throwing his glove to the ground moments after committing a throwing error in the seventh inning Sunday. Reyes said he threw his glove out of anger at himself and not in an effort to show up first baseman Carlos Delgado, who appeared to have a chance to catch the throw.

“Well, he’s got to get over that,” Hernandez said at the time, according to one transcript of the broadcast. “Enough babying going on now. He’s a grown man. He’s been around a long enough time. Take off the kid gloves.”

Reyes said friends and family alerted him to the comments immediately after the game, prompting him to approach Hernandez in front of teammates on the late-night flight here to St. Louis.

“A lot of people told me, and that’s no good,” Reyes told The Post. “I was mad at myself because I make an error in that situation. It makes me mad, because [Hernandez] played the game, too. He knows it is not an easy game. And he knows when you make an error, you are supposed to feel bad.”

Reyes and Hernandez emphatically denied they nearly came to blows, with Hernandez insisting testily that it be described as “a conversation” instead.

“I wouldn’t say ‘confronted,’ ” Hernandez said brusquely when approached in the team’s broadcast booth at Busch Stadium last night. “We had a conversation. ‘Confront’ is not the word.”

Hernandez, a five-time All-Star first baseman who was a member of the Mets’ 1986 world championship team and is in the club’s Hall of Fame, said he has put the incident behind him.

“I’ve had several conversations with players over my career,” Hernandez said. “Jose and I are fine. It was not a confrontational conversation, [but] what went on with our conversation is between Jose and I. If he told you, that’s his choice.”

Reyes, however, made it clear to The Post that there is still simmering anger on his part toward the opinionated Hernandez.

“I don’t know why in that situation he’s talking like that,” Reyes told The Post. “Like I said, I just [made] an error and I feel bad. I threw my glove down, but I [felt] bad because you’re not supposed to be giving extra outs to the other team.”

This isn’t the first time a popular Mets player has taken issue with critical comments by Hernandez.

Hernandez wrote on Madison Square Garden’s Web site in 2002 that the Mets “had no heart” and “quit a long time ago” on then-manager Bobby Valentine. Mike Piazza responded by calling Hernandez “a clueless voice from the grave” who was “just trying to make a name for himself at our expense.”